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US to probe Tesla's 'Full Self-Driving' system after pedestrian killed in low visibility conditions (apnews.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The U.S. government’s road safety agency is again investigating Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system, this time after getting reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents that it opened the probe on Thursday with the company reporting four crashes after Teslas entered areas of low visibility, including sun glare, fog and airborne dust.

In addition to the pedestrian’s death, another crash involved an injury, the agency said.

Investigators will look into the ability of “Full Self-Driving” to “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions, and if so, the contributing circumstances for these crashes.”

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This is directly a result of Elon's edict that Tesla cars don't use lidar. If you aren't aware Elon set that as a requirement at the beginning of Tesla's self driving project because he didn't want to spend the money on lidar for all Tesla cars.

His "first principles" logic is that humans don't use lidar therefore self driving should be able to be accomplished without (expensive) enhanced vision tools. While this statement has some modicum of truth, it's obviously going to trade off safely in situations where vision is compromised. Think fog or sunlight shining in your cameras / eyes or a person running across the street at night wearing all black. There are obvious scenarios where lidar is a massive safety advantage, but Elon made a decision for $$ to not have that. This sounds like a direct and obvious outcome of that edict.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

His “first principles” logic is that humans don’t use lidar therefore self driving should be able to be accomplished without (expensive) enhanced vision tools.

This kind of idiocy is why people tried to build airplanes with flapping wings. Way too many people thought that the best way to create a plane was to just copy what nature did with birds. Nature showed it was possible, so just copy nature.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

To be fair, we achieved flight by copying nature. Once we realized the important part was the shape of a wing more than the flapping.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My vacuum robot uses lidar. How expensive could it be??

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

You need slightly more advanced lidar for cars because you need to be able to see further ahead then 10 ft, and you need to be able to see in adverse weather conditions (rain, fog, snow), that I assume you don't experience indoors. That said, it really isn't as expensive as he is making it out to be.